RUNAWAY
575
he contained deep within him the smoldering fire of independence;
certainly through my exhortations I was later able to fan it into a
terrible blaze. Certainly, too, that fire must have been burning when
shortly after his sale to Travis-stunned, confused, heartsick, with no
God to tum to--he decided to run away.
Hark once told me how
it
all happened. At the Barnett planta–
tion, where life for the field Negroes had been harsh, the matter of
running away was of continual interest and concern. All of this was
talk, however, since even the stupidest and most foolhardy slave was
likely to be intimidated by the prospect of stumbling across the hun–
dreds of miles of wilderness which lay to the north, and knew also
that even to attain the free states was no guarantee of refuge: many
a Negro had been hustled back into slavery by covetous sharp-eyed
Northern white men. It was
all
rather hopeless but some had tried
and some had almost succeeded. One of the Barnett Negroes, a clever,
older man named Hannibal, had vowed after a severe beating by the
overseer to take no more. He "lit out" one spring night and after a
month found himself not far from Washington, in the outskirts of the
town of Alexandria, where he was taken prisoner by a suspicious
citizen with a fowling piece who eventually returned Hannibal to the
plantation and, presumably, collected the two hundred dollar reward.
It was Hannibal (now a sort of hero to many of the slaves though
to others a madman) whose advice Hark remembered when he him–
self became a runaway. Move in the night, sleep by day, follow the
North Star, avoid main-traveled roads, avoid dogs. Hannibal's destina–
tion had been the Susquehanna river
in
Maryland. A Quaker mis–
sionary, a wandering, queer, distraught, wild-eyed white man (soon
chased off the plantation), had managed to impart this much in–
formation to Hannibal's group of berry-pickers: after Baltimore fol–
low close by the highway to the north, and at the Susquehanna cross–
ing ask for the Quaker meeting house, where someone was stationed
night and day to convey runaways a few miles upriver to Pennsyl–
vania and freedom. This intelligence Hark memorized with care, par–
ticularly the all-important name of the river-rather a trick for a field
hand's tongue-repeating it over and over in Hannibal's presence until
he had it properly, just as he had been told:
Squash-honna, Squash–
honna, Squash-honna.
Hark had no way of knowing that Travis was at heart a more
